Summary

In the fourth section, Césaire lists the accomplices of colonialism, a list that extends beyond mere bureaucrats and which encompasses a number of different disciplines. The list includes journalists, academics, ethnographers, intellectuals, agrarian sociologists, hoodwinkers, and all people who “labor for the defense of Western bourgeois society” (54). Césaire refuses to consider whether, on a personal or private level, these people acted with good or bad intentions, and to focus on the “objective social implications” (55) of their work.

He offers three particular examples. As his first example, Césaire cites Gourou, the other a book titled Le Pays tropicaux (Tropical Countries, in English). Césaire praises Gourou for “slip[ping] his leash” (57) and mentioning the abuses of the plantation slave system employed in many tropical climes. However, Césaire wishes that Gourou would go further and specifically blame “colonialist capitalism” (57), which C...